So if you didn’t catch lesson 1 of the Starting a Business blog series, you can find it here. Go ahead and take a gander at that… we’ll wait.

Alright, moving on to the next step in the process:  Once we’ve figured out what topics our blog should cover by first looking at what our intended readers want and need, we have to figure out our Unique Value Proposition so we can properly market the blog.

We need to be able to answer the question in every potential readers’ mind: “Why should I pay attention to you and what you have to say on your blog instead of some other person/company?”  Yes, it’s true, our readers are looking out for #1. And it’s our job to convince them that our blog is of value to them.  They want to know what’s in it for them, what they’re getting and how that makes their life better.

“On our blog, we cover the latest news in our industry.” Awesome. Really. But still not a UVP, so try again. That tells the reader what they’ll will find there, and if in your industry, they will surely understand how that would be important.  However, it still doesn’t explain why they should read YOUR blog rather than some OTHER industry news blog.

There are about a bajillion blogs out there. And let’s face it, everybody’s strapped for time. Justifying the time investment (no matter how small) you’d like your readers to make is critical to the success of your blog. This is the unique part of your UVP. What makes you, and therefore your blog, unique?

Once you’ve figured out what makes you and your blog one of a kind, you have to figure out if it’s sales-worthy.   You need readers, enough of them to make it worth your while. A sizeable audience interested in reading your posts is the other key to success.

So to sum up: The 2 keys of a winning UVP:

1. It must be clear about what makes your blog a standout in the crowd.
2. It has to be something people actually want.

If you don’t have a UVP, or your current value prop needs some work, take time to develop this concept.  To help guide your thinking, we’ve provided a few questions you can ask yourself.

• Do you talk about topics as they relate to a particular segment of the population? demographic?  industry?  entity?
• Do you blog about a niche topic?
• Do you have a unique perspective on a common topic?
• What kind of tone do you take in your blog? funny? casual? educational?
• How will readers participate in your blog? will comments be turned on?  will there be a forum? surveys?
• Are you going to track comments and respond frequently to your readers?
• Are you going to let readers and commentators interact with minimal involvement?
• How are you going to interact with other websites and blogs? links to external content?  guest posts?

Good luck with this – let us know if the task was difficult or easy for you in the comments.

Forrester’s 2009 report about sponsored conversations defended pay-per-posts as a valid approach to drive buzz for companies.  The analysts define  sponsored conversations as:

A marketing technique in which marketers provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for their posting blog content about a brand.

Each blogger has an audience, the members of which implicitly trust the opinions of said blogger.  Put simply, if the blogger endorses a product or company, their audience will be more inclined to buy it.

Sponsored conversations accomplish a couple of things for your company:

1. They get to show the hands-on experience of using your product, which can’t be otherwise seen through advertising or in-store sales.
2. They widen your exposure for a relatively low investment.

The key to making the arrangement work for all parties is disclosure and authenticity on the part of the blogger and sponsoring company.  Bloggers should be allowed express their honest opinion, so there are some obvious risks.  For one, your whole plan could backfire if you get a negative review.  To be honest though, bloggers, by nature, tend to be genuine types of people, so they probably wouldn’t accept the assignment if they didn’t already have at least a neutral opinion about your brand or product.  The risk is there and it’s real so it’s good to plan ahead in the event such a scenario actually plays out.

I personally have reviewed everything from my delectable (no, really) Epson Workforce 600 to books. I find it’s a great way to engage with a brand and understand how it can help my audience.

So what do you think? Is your company embracing this new form of promotion? Will you start?  Let me know in the comments.

If your company has invested the time and/or money in social media monitoring, it’s important to make sure you’re tuned in to ALL the conversations that matter to you.  In our experience, this activity is often housed within marketing departments – and that probably makes sense since that group is generally responsible for all customer communications.  However, if you’re only monitoring brand and product, you may be missing a whole lot of other chatter that affects the business.

Social media monitoring can be used to inform loss prevention, corporate communications, employee relations, and public relations teams as well.  With this in mind, we’ve put together a list of categories you should consider creating monitoring terms for.  You should adapt this list to your particular business.

1. Company name
2. Company URL
3. Product names
4. Product URLs
5. Employee online activity
6. Employee professional and personal blogs
7. Public facing figures
8. Competitors
9. Industry websites/blogs
10. Relevant Wikipedia Entries
11. Third Party Influencers
12. Key Stakeholders

We don’t think this list is nearly complete, so if you have suggestions for adding to it, let us know in the comments.

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A few years ago, it was sufficient to put out a press release or hold a news conference in light of a company crisis or bad PR.  Not so in today’s connected world – news spreads fast via Twitter, Facebook, blogs and online social networks in general – especially the scandalous type.  Remember the Domino’s Pizza fiasco?

To summarize, Domino’s employees did what underpaid, bored restaurant employees do… they played with the food. And recorded it. And put it on YouTube. Their negligence cost Domino’s quite a bit in revenue and brand appeal. Unfortunately Domino’s underestimated the viral community we live in and their attempts to quell the hype didn’t even come close to getting the job done.

Domino’s should have reacted the minute they found out about the employee videos. To avoid making the same mistake of being unprepared, take these 5 steps and be ready to deal with negative publicity if and when it comes knocking:

1. Have a plan. Get your strategy together before bad things happen so you don’t have to scramble when the moment arrives. Assign roles and responsibilities to key staff and make decisions about which media platforms you will leverage.

1. Monitor conversations. This can be as simple as creating a fewGoogle Alerts profiles for your company, brand, products and key company employees.

1. Set up a Twitter profile. You’ll be that much quicker on the draw if you’re tapped into a conversation agent where you can communicate in realtime. You’ll be glad you took the time to cultivate a group of followers that are readily available to listen to your message. Domino’s scrambled to get enough followers to make a splash a little too late.

1. Establish media contacts now. Build relationships with folks who can help you spread the word you want spread. If you want to give an exclusive interview to tell your side of the story, you’ll know just who to call.

1. Get closer to your employees. Don’t allow there to be a disconnect between corporate and staff in the field. These employees are the face of your company, you should work hard to make them feel like a part of the whole – like they belong to something bigger.

Create clear guidelines, workflows and processes with the help of any employees who have specific responsibilities to carry out. Make sure everybody is clear on exactly what their job is and how it fits into the overarching strategy.

Your best chance of minimizing the damage is to plan ahead. Get started today.

So you’re thinking of launching a business blog but aren’t sure where to begin.  More and more these days, we’re coming across articles, advice, workshops and seminars that systematize blogging.  They all claim to provide the “winning” recipe for a successful business blog – and marketers are only too eager to fall in line.

Here’s the problem – If every blog owner out there starts to follow the same regimented approach to blogging, wouldn’t the blog lose the very quality that makes it compelling to its’ audience?  Its’ uniqueness?  A blog, by definition, is niche.  Everything about it is custom – from writing topic to audience.

Actually, the driving factor behind the success-or not-of any blog comes down simply to product definition.  Successful blogs have a clearly defined purpose and audience.  Every post is written with that perfect reader and commenter in mind.  From topic to language to tone – a well planned, well written, well executed blog is all about the audience.

So before you launch your blog, try to learn what your perfect readers want and need.  Find out what’s important to them and use that insight to play up your writing, captivate their attention, and keep them coming back.  Who do you want hanging around with you on your blog?  Write for that perfect reader and watch your audience grow.

EXERCISE:  Describe your perfect reader in full detail.  Take into account demographic, psychographic, lifestyle and behavioral information and try to develop a person out of all the information you put together.  Give your perfect reader a name and build them as a character.

To guide your thinking, ask yourself relevant questions such as:  Where does your reader live?  What does your reader do for a living?  At what level are they in their career?  Are they happy in their career?  How much money do they make?  Do they have children? If so, what are the genders and ages of their children?  If not, why not?  Are they college graduates?  What did they study while in school?  Are they married or single?

When you take the time to get to know your reader, you really gain a clarity of purpose and begin to set the stage for blogging success.  Have fun with this exercise and let us know in the comments what golden nuggets of information you dig up.